Those Who Know, Chuckle.
“HAS ANYONE EVER SENT BACK a meal that you’ve prepared?” the tentative young man asked Prosatio Silban.
“Twice,” was the cook-errant’s reply. “It is not an experience I relished, or wish to repeat.”
“How did it come about?” Continue reading “Grace (A Prosatio Silban Amuse-Bouche)”
WHAT WOULD LIFE BE WITHOUT the occasional unsolvable riddle?
In epicurean Pormaris’ far-famed restaurant district squats a prominent monument. It is an oblong, boxy affair, wrought of lavender marble, with carved ivory pillars framing each corner and a tasteful capstone covered in gold leaf. The street-facing side bears a simple brass plaque: “To the Unknown Gourmand.”
That is the first mystery.
Once yearly, but according to no otherwise-fixed schedule, an anonymous party deposits beneath the plaque a menu from a different local dining establishment.
And that is the second. Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Cryptic Cenotaph”
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO become unforgotten?
“As for me,” Prosatio Silban said, raising his glass of white duliac to the Pelvhi’s Chopping-House customers crowded around him, “the most memorable person I ever met was a man who went by the alias of ‘Lucky.’ Let me tell you about our first encounter …”
* * *
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said the limping, ragged man, and bowed deeply. “I don’t suppose you would, but I must ask anyway: Can you help out with a meal a fellow Uulian who’s down on his luck?” Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Merry Misfortunate”
… [T]here is no need for you to go a-begging for aphorisms from philosophers, precepts from Holy Scripture, fables from poets, speeches from orators, or miracles from saints; but merely to take care that your style and diction run musically, pleasantly, and plainly, with clear, proper, and well-placed words, setting forth your purpose to the best of your power and as well as possible, and putting your ideas intelligibly, without confusion or obscurity. Strive, too, that in reading your story the melancholy may be moved to laughter, and the merry made merrier still; that the simple shall not be wearied, that the judicious shall admire the invention, that the grave shall not despise it, nor the wise fail to praise it. … [I]f you succeed in this you will have achieved no small success.”
— Miguel de Cervantes (from the Prologue to Don Quixote)
Favicon Plugin created by Jake Ruston's Wordpress Plugins - Powered by Briefcases and r4 ds card.